Kiev’s move to retake Russian-held areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to avoid encirclement, leaving behind significant numbers of weapons and ammunition in a hasty retreat as the war entered its 200th day on Sunday . A jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy taunted the Russians on camera on Saturday night, saying “the Russian army these days is showing what it does best – showing its back.” He posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers raising the national flag over Chkalovsk, another town retaken in the counterattack. While most attention focused on the counterattack, Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had been reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid, allowing engineers to shut down its last operating reactor to protect the plant in through the battles. The plant, one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the first days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for bombings around it. Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by bombing knocked the plant off the transmission lines, the reactor has been powering vital safety equipment in so-called “island mode” — an unreliable regime that left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a potential nuclear accident. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation at the plant in a conversation Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin said. Ukraine’s army chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyy, announced that its forces had retaken about 3,000 square kilometers (about 1,160 square miles) since the counteroffensive began in early September. He noted that Ukrainian troops are only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the border with Russia. Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops had regained control of more than 40 settlements in the Kharkiv region, noting that he could not give an exact number because the operation was still ongoing. Defense Minister Anna Malyar said Ukrainian forces are firing shells containing propaganda into areas where they are seeking to advance. “One of the ways to communicate with the enemy in areas where there is no Internet is to launch propaganda shells,” he wrote on Facebook. “Before we move forward, our defenders say hello to the Russian invaders and give them one last chance to surrender. Otherwise, only death awaits them on Ukrainian soil.” The Russian setback marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war. The Kharkov campaign came as a surprise to Moscow, which had moved many of its troops from the region to the south in anticipation of a counterattack there. In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the withdrawal of troops from Izyum and other areas was intended to bolster Moscow’s forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south. The explanation sounded similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling out of the Kiev region earlier this year when they failed to capture the capital. The Russian forces around Izyum have been key to Moscow’s bid to seize the Donetsk region, and their withdrawal would dramatically weaken its ability to press its assault on the Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the south. A map released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday showed its forces retreating to a narrow strip of land along the border. Igor Strelkov, who led Russian-backed forces when the Donbas separatist conflict erupted in 2014, scoffed at the Russian Defense Ministry’s explanation for the retreat, suggesting that Russia’s surrender of territory near the border was “a contribution to a Ukrainian arrangement”. The retreat prompted an angry response from Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who decried it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to step up its war effort. Many sharply criticized Russian authorities for going ahead with fireworks and other lavish celebrations in Moscow that marked a city holiday on Saturday despite the devastation in Ukraine. As Russian forces hurriedly withdrew from Izyum under Ukrainian fire on Saturday, Putin attended the opening of a giant Ferris wheel in a Moscow park, though it reportedly closed for repairs soon after. A new transport link and a sports arena were also inaugurated. The action underscored the Kremlin’s narrative that the war, which it calls a “special military operation,” was proceeding according to plan without affecting the daily lives of Russians. Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov criticized Moscow’s celebrations as a serious mistake. “Fireworks in Moscow on a tragic day of Russia’s military defeat will have extremely serious political consequences,” Markov wrote on his messaging app’s channel. “Authorities should not celebrate when people mourn.” In a sign of a possible rift in Russian leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, said the retreat stemmed from blunders by Russian military leadership. “They have made mistakes and I think they will draw the necessary conclusions,” Kadyrov said. “If they do not make changes in the strategy of conducting the special military operation in the next day or two, I will be forced to contact the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground. .” Despite Ukraine’s gains, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the head of NATO warned on Friday that the war would likely drag on for months. Blinken said the conflict was entering a critical period and urged the West to continue supporting Ukraine through a difficult winter. The US and its NATO allies are working to ensure Ukrainian forces have “the things they need most right now,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “And we’re seeing Ukrainians with tremendous patriotic determination — but also after eight years of joint training with the U.S. military, going back to 2014 with the invasion of Crimea — we’re seeing the combined effect of collective training and resources that are at the right time this moment, showing that Vladimir Putin’s grandiose ramblings about what he can do in Ukraine are hollow and failing,” he told CNN. —- Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.
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